On March 6, the state of Maine became the first in the United States to make college savings for newborns universal and automatic, putting into practice research pioneered by Michael Sherraden, PhD, the George Warren Brown Distinguished University Professor and director ofthe Brown School’s Center for Social Development at Washington University in St. Louis.
The Washington University Medical Center is undergoing the initial phases of a transformation that primarily will feature expansions of St. Louis Children’s Hospital, Barnes-Jewish Hospital and Siteman Cancer Center. It also will include more space for Washington University Physicians clinics and diagnostics and new facilities for women and infants, oncology and surgical services. If you’re curious about the expansion, renderings will be on display and staff will be on hand to answer questions March 10 and 11 at two campus locations.
Washington University in St Louis chemist Timothy Wencewicz says we’ll stay ahead of antibiotic resistance only if we find drugs with new scaffolds, or core chemical structures. One promising candidate, an antibiotic made by a bacterium than infects plants, caught his attention because it contains an “enchanted ring,” the beta-lactam ring that is found in penicillin. In this drug candidate, however, it acts against a different target than the penicillins.
Roger Tsien, one of three chemists who won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry
in 2008 for the discovery and development of green fluorescent protein, will give the Leopold Marcus lecture at Washington University in
St. Louis. His talk, “Fluorescent Molecules for Fun and Profit,” is intended for a general audience and will take place at 4 p.m. Wednesday, March 12, in the Laboratory Sciences Building, Room 300. The talk is free and open to the public.
Three promising biomarkers being studied to detect Alzheimer’s disease in its early stages appear to undergo a surprising shift as patients develop symptoms of dementia, researchers led by Anne Fagan, PhD, at the School of Medicine report.
Tia Drake, executive director of Graduate Medical Education (GME) at the School of Medicine, has been honored with the GME Institutional Coordinator Excellence Award.
Jon Lowe is the new chef at Ibby’s in WUSTL’s Danforth University Center. Learn more about Lowe, who loves French cooking and making granola with his 3-year-old daughter. He previously worked at Clayton seafood restaurant Oceano Bistro.
“If these two studies are really correct, what people in general are trying to do” to get and stay thin “might be completely wrong in terms of maintaining health and even longevity,” suggests WUSTL microbiologist Shin-ichiro Imai (pictured) in a Science magazine article on new dietary research. This story and more in today’s roundup.
Eric Lundgren’s debut novel, “The Facades,” has been praised by The New Yorker as “hardboiled existentialism.” Marni Ludwig’s debut collection of poetry, “Pinwheel,” was chosen by Jean Valentine for the 2012 New Issues Poetry Prize. On Thursday, March 6, these two recent alumni will return to campus for a free public reading.
John DiPersio, MD, PhD, chief of the Division of Oncology at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis, and Robert Schreiber, PhD, director of the school’s Center for Human Immunology and Immunotherapy Programs, will be honored in April by the American Association for Cancer Research.
